Dare Me to Live

Chapter 21 (Part one)

"What are you talking about?" I demanded.

My heart was racing like I had just run a marathon. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

I thought of how Tyler spoke of Mia, how pain still flared in his face whenever her name was said aloud. But then that night with his family came to mind—how she was all but unmentionable, the rift between his father and brother, the idea that they "had finally put it behind them."

I shook my head. "You're lying." I said. But why would Chris lie about something like that?

Instead of answering, Chris slipped his backpack off his shoulder. From within he pulled a manila folder haphazardly stuffed with papers and newspaper articles.

"It's all in there," he said, handing it to me. "I just want you safe, Dash. You don't know him."

"Why?" I asked even as I accepted the folder. Fear and confusion threatened to choke me. "Why? Why did you look him up?" Because I needed to be angry at Chris for something. Because I needed to focus on something besides the two-ton folder in my hands.

There was a strange sadness about his eyes and lips. As though bearing this news physically hurt him

"Look it over tonight," he said. "You can make your own decisions, Dash. But I just wanted you to know."

~~~~~

As soon as Chris left, I bolted up three flights of stairs to my room. Amber was shuffling papers on her desk when I barged in. Already, a fight was brewing in her features as her mouth opened to confront me about what I could only assume was Chris's rudeness.

"Not now," I said, sitting down heavily at my own desk.

I stabbed the power button my laptop. Pieces of thoughts floated around in my head, connecting and breaking apart, never coalescing into anything, as I stared at the folder Chris had given me.

What if I threw it away and never looked at it? What if I set it on fire, watched the words curl up in smoke, drift away in ash, and never read what those files and articles had to say?

But even as I contemplated it, I found myself reaching out to open it. The first article was recently printed, but the publication date was from three years ago.

"Star Hockey Player Charged in Girlfriend's Death"

The first headline nearly knocked the breath out of me. So that even as I closed my eyes, I still saw the words flashing, searing into my eyelids.

Tyler wasn't a murderer. He couldn't be.

I knew Tyler, but the guy they described in the papers wasn't the boy who had spun me around on the ice yesterday, wasn't the guy who had made me feel alive again last night.

I read the paper flat on the desktop because my hands were shaking too badly to hold it.

The papers spoke of a well-liked, well-known high school athlete, a rising star in hockey with a bright future. A boy who seemed to have it all, who was kind, always willing to lend a hand, but whose captivating smile hid a sinister side. They spoke of Mia, a talented musician with unlimited possibilities which were cut short when she was pushed to her death from a bridge, at a place locally known as "River Tracks."

I almost threw up when I read that name. That was where we had gone walking—the first time he had told me about Mia. An image sprang to mind of the weathered piece of caution tape I had seen tangled around the bridge spoke. Back then I didn't pay it much mind; it could have just been a warning about the hazard of the old bridge. But what if it was something more? What if it was the last remnants of a crime scene.